• • • • • • • • • • FAMOUS QUOTES on free speech

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”  Thomas Jefferson, 1786

“Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free.”  Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

“If the fires of freedom and civil liberties burn low in other lands, they must be made brighter in our own. If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. If in other lands the eternal truths of the past are threatened by intolerance, we must provide a safe place for their perpetuation.”  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938

“There is no more fundamental axiom of American freedom than the familiar statement: In a free country we punish men for crimes they commit but never for the opinions they have.”  Harry S. Truman, 1950

“Don't join the burners. Don't be afraid to go to your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend your own ideas of decency; that should be your only censorship.”  Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is afraid of its people.” John F. Kennedy, 1962

“Opinion and protest are the life breath of democracy - even when it blows heavy.”  Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, human rights invented America.”  Jimmy Carter, 1981

“There can be no greater good than the quest for peace, and no finer purpose than the preservation of freedom.”  Ronald Reagan, 1985

“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”  Benjamin Franklin

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  Benjamin Franklin

“Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”   Benjamin Franklin

“A popular government, without popular information, or the mean of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”  James Madison

"The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is besides the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech."   U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

“The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

“Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime...”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart

“Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stanley F. Reed

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”  U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.

“If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”  George Orwell

“Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.” Salman Rushdie

“Only the suppressed word is dangerous.”  Ludwig Börne

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”   U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights